


Always in Your Orbit

by Akiko_Natsuko



Series: Reaper76 [74]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Anger, Betrayal, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Dark!Jack, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Human 'Monsters', Hurt, Lies, M/M, Secrets, Strained Relationships, Twitter thread fic, assumed dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22241830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akiko_Natsuko/pseuds/Akiko_Natsuko
Summary: When the summons comes from the 'Strike-Commander's' office, Gabriel almost ignores it. He's tired of the conversations that don't say anything and the arguments that say too much in the worst possible way. It's only 'almost' though because he's as bound to Jack as the Earth is to the sun. Something that he hates, and misses in equal measure because they have drifted. Or he has drifted, settled into a different orbit - closer to the darkness, but still unable to escape Jack.And when Jack vanishes, Gabriel chases.
Relationships: Reaper | Gabriel Reyes/Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison
Series: Reaper76 [74]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1188655
Comments: 10
Kudos: 69





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that if you want to talk to me about my fics and writing, or anime/shows/games in general then you can now find me on discord [The Unholy Trinity](https://discord.gg/jdpcfy6XTB).

When the summons comes from the 'Strike-Commander's' office, Gabriel almost ignores it. He's tired of the conversations that don't say anything and the arguments that say too much in the worst possible way. It's only 'almost' though because he's as bound to Jack as the Earth is to the sun. Something that he hates, and misses in equal measure because they have drifted. Or he has drifted, settled into a different orbit - closer to the darkness, but still unable to escape Jack.

So when the next message comes with a 'now' tacked onto the end, he growls, curses and goes. Idly he wonders what he's done this time - as far as he's aware he hasn't broken any rules or laws in the last...week. His paperwork is done. He'd even minded his tongue at the last meeting. Not that that makes much difference these days. Half the time, he's convinced that Jack's just lonely - and its easier to fight with him, than admit that fact. To acknowledge that he's not okay in the face of everything that was happening with Overwatch and Blackwatch, and them.

There was a time when he would have been the first person Jack would have come to. A time when he would have been the only one allowed to see that weakness. But, now he's as shut out as the rest of the world. He doesn't want this meeting. He doesn't want to see this new Jack.

Still, he goes, because in his own way he's as bad as Jack. As helpless. Maybe, that's why he's so angry with the other man - because if he could only admit it too, perhaps they could find a halfway point. He doesn't want to believe it's too late.  
  
The first red flag comes as enters the central atrium, heading for the stairs rather than the lifts - its a delay tactic nothing more. Still, as he has to push his way through, he falters. There are too many people. But there's been no alarm, no sign of attack. Yet when he glances towards the entrance, he can see they're guarded. Not against the outside, but the inside, and something, not quite dread, not yet at least takes hold and he rushes for the stairs - now out of safety rather than delay, he doesn't want to get stuck in a lift again  
  
He takes the stairs two at a time. Messages his team to be ready - praying that this isn't going to be a witch-hunt against Blackwatch, but surely even now Jack would have warned him.

Maybe not.

The second red flag comes when he reaches the floor where Jack's office is, to find guards along the corridor. They don't stop him, but he can feel their eyes on him, and he barely resists the temptation to show them why he's the commander of Blackwatch. The dread is growing now  
  
_'I'm trying, Gabe..." Jack had sounded so tired. Not in the sense of physical exhaustion, although Gabriel could see the bags beneath his eyes. But emotionally, mentally spent. Defeated. "I'm drawing as much of their ire as I can, but..." I'm just one man..._

Gabriel hadn't thought much of that conversation at the time. Too angry about the restrictions being placed on him, to see that maybe it was more than lip service this time. Now, as he stalked towards the office door, he wished that he'd listened. If they'd come for Jack...

It's not Jack's voice that beckons him inside, although it's one that he, unfortunately, knows almost as well after the last few months and he has to bite back a snarl. Instead, he steps inside with the smirk that Jack has told him a hundred times to drop around the man.

Sure enough, Petras is sat behind the desk, and Gabriel has a brief second of amusement that the man looks even more out of place than Jack did when he first got the promotion. At some point, Jack had managed to make it his own, and the director looked like a little boy lost. He looks around, expecting to find Jack pretending to not want to shoot the man. But there's no sign of the SC. Instead, he finds Jack's PA on the couch under guard, twisting her hands together, eyes a little too bright as she meets his gaze.

"Gabriel..."

"Quiet," Petras orders, and Gabriel makes no effort to hide his scowl as he swings back to face the man.

"What is this about...Director?" He adds the title reluctantly, thinking of a dozen other names he'd rather use. "Where is J...the Strike Commander?" He’d almost slipped. It's not as though the brass don't know how close they are, although not the full extent of it, but there is danger here, he can feel it in the way his hairs stand on end as Petras stares at him for a moment, before smiling. It's false and full of teeth.

"I was hoping you could tell me."

Gabriel had never understood how people could say that words hung in the air, at least until that moment. Because Petras' words lingered between them, expectant, accusing...and confusing. "What do you mean?" He demanded, catching the PA's sharp intake of breath behind him.

Petras looks almost disappointed with his response, so that's something, at least until he leans back and steeples his hand. "It means, Commander Reyes. That Strike Commander Morrison is either missing or AWOL and that I believe you know where he is."

Gabriel's first temptation is to laugh. Not at what's happening, because the dread is deepening. But at the idea that Jack would go AWOL. The idiot had thrown everything into the job that he hadn't wanted, destroying himself, their relationship, their friendships.

All for the job

Jack would no sooner go AWOL than Gabriel would walk away from Jack. The second temptation was to storm out of there, because if Jack was missing... there were too many possible suspects, too many threats, and they already had a head start. That one was harder to resist.

Then came the anger, and the disbelief that this man - the man sitting in Jack's chair and pretending as though he could ever measure up to him - dared to point the finger at him. That won out, and it stayed the urge to rush away. Because he knew if he did, then all the doors would come crashing down in his face, and Jack would be gone, with no one left to hunt for him. And so Gabriel straightened, shoulders squared, head up. The perfect soldier. Well if you didn’t count from the anger, and hatred that bled into his voice.

"You're an idiot if you think I would do anything to him." Nice going, Gabe - he's not sure if it's Ana or Jack's voice that he hears, but he winces. "As far as I knew, he was the one summoning me up here. I hadn't set eyes on him since..."

Now he hesitated.

When had he last seen Jack? There had been a time he could answer it without a thought, would no the when and where in an instance. Now it took him a minute, not helping his cause. “Since the last meeting.”

 _Three days._ How long had Jack been gone? Surely he had seen him since then because there had been a time when three days would feel like a lifetime. “I received paperwork his signature just yesterday though...” It’s a slim hope, and he looks across to Maria on the couch.

“He was here until late last night, I left before him.” Petras doesn’t silence her this time, watching her unblinkingly. “When he didn’t arrive this morning I assumed he had just stayed too late or was busy. He’s been late a lot recently...” It’s clear that it had been a secret.

A secret Gabriel hadn't been privy to. He finds it hard to imagine Jack shirking his duty, but there's no hint of a lie in her eyes and he knows the tells. He made sure to study her before letting her close to Jack, and she's telling the truth. Which raises far too many questions

"It was only when the Director informed me that the Strike-Commander had missed a call, that I tried to reach him and couldn't get through. Athena couldn't get through either..." Maria trailed off, and now the dread is blossoming into something new and far more dangerous.

Fear.

Ignoring Petras, and the guards who tense as he takes a step back and pulls out his communicator. Deep down, he knows it's futile, but some part of him hopes that Jack is the same as him - unable to escape that call, that pull between them and so he pings Jack's number and waits.

It rings.

And rings...

And rings, and rings...

Eventually, it cuts out, and Gabe immediately calls it again, trying to ignore the way his fingers tremble a little this time. _Come on, Jack. I know things have been bad between us, I know I've given you no reason to think I'll listen_

_But please..._

He rings a dozen times, with no result, before Petras breaks the awkward silence that had filled the room and Gabriel immediately tenses. Jack is missing, possibly in danger. But that's not the only threat here. "Commander Reyes, you will remain here until I have confirmation of your whereabouts and activities for at least the last forty-eight hours, and until this base has been swept from top to bottom."

"But...."

"I can throw you in a cell now if you prefer?" Petras cuts across him, and it's not an idle threat and Gabe retreats with a defeated nod.

He's frozen in place, as Petras and his guards leave, closing the door firmly behind them. It's not locked, but Gabriel knows that doesn't mean anything. Right now, he might as well be in that cell. Apart from the fact that they've left Maria with him.

He waits for another minute or two, not moving, before he types another series of numbers into the communicator before tossing it onto Jack's desk, and turning to look at her. "Where is he?" She might have been telling the truth earlier, but not everything that she knew. It's there in the way she doesn't meet his gaze as she gets to her feet, moving to the wide windows that overlook the rest of the base.

"Why should I tell you, Commander Reyes?" Her voice is colder now, distant, and the question cuts far deeper than it should, and Gabriel flinches.

Because it sounds very much like... _'Do you really care?'_

"Do you really want Petras to be the one to find him?" Gabe counters, because if he's honest, he doesn't have an answer to her question. Even the unspoken one is... complicated. He cares. He's always cared. But, maybe he hadn't cared enough.

"You didn't answer my question." She's relentless. He'd liked that about her once, knowing that Jack needed someone like that in his court when Gabriel couldn't be there. Unfortunately, he hadn't stayed as well, and now the battle lines were being drawn. With him on the wrong side.

"I care," he doesn't look at her. Instead, he looks at the desk. If he closes his eyes, he could see Jack still sat there - too big for the seat that had been built for a bureaucrat and not a soldier. Not a hero. Uncomfortable. Lost. But learning, and growing into the blue. "I've always cared," he tells the image of Jack in his mind. "I just..." What? Forgot how to put it into words that weren't spiked and hurtful? Forgot that they had always been more than the job until they weren't. "I was angry, and you never seemed to listen, and so I stopped too."

"He always listened." Maria's voice draws him back to the present, and cold hard reality, but there's something softer in her voice now. Not forgiveness, but a warming of the ice. "He listened and tried to find answers. Got himself into trouble more than once for going 'too far'."

"But..." _He never said._

"What would you have done if he had? Helped? Or caused another situation like Rialto?" It's a low blow and they both know it. It's also true. Missions had been his release, his chance to get his blood flowing and take out his anger on those that deserved it. "He was trying to keep you safe." _To show, he cared..._

"And now?" It's almost a relief to hear her words. To know that it wasn't one-sided and that Jack had still cared, but he hasn't missed the fact that she still hasn't answered his question.

"I don't know."

He must've made some kind of noise, because she lifts a hand, stalling the outburst before it can begin. "I know he was investigating something, but I don't know what. He closed the screens whenever I came in, and he wouldn't let me help, said that it was safer for everyone..."

But not for Jack. "

You said that he's been late recently?" He already knows that it's not going to help, there is a slump to her shoulders now, defeat slipping in as the defensiveness fades.

"He never said why or where he'd been. But more than once, it was off base. I checked."

There are a dozen questions through his mind. And almost as many names that he'd like to call Jack for taking those risks, ignoring the fact that he did the same on an almost daily basis. "Petras isn't going to find him..."

It's not a question. Jack isn't here.

The only question now is whether Jack left willingly... something that Gabriel would have said was impossible only moments before, or whether someone had taken him. Both are terrifying in their own way.

***

It takes far too long for the base to be declared clear, something that Gabriel could have told them hours ago. Not that they would have listened. Even now, with Gabe's alibis in hand and the evidence in hand, Petras is clearly reluctant to clear him to join the search. The sharp reminder that Blackwatch is not above the law is a warning and a threat, and Gabriel knows he is courting trouble when he bares his teeth in a feral grin. "Only if you catch me." Then he walks away, Petras' spluttering fading behind him, and Maria at his heels.

They hadn't wasted their time while waiting. Locked in the room, and protected only by the jammer on Gabriel's communicator they hadn't had much to work with. But they'd had enough. No one had thought to lock them out the system for one, either that or someone was helping, or more likely waiting for them to incriminate themselves, and they'd searched Jack's files. Not that they'd found much. Whatever the hell he had been doing, it was either buried deep or wasn't a record at all and Gabriel couldn't help but wonder when Jack had got so sneaky.

Then they'd lit the distress beacon.

It was a function that Gabriel had hoped they'd never have to use, and if he was honest, he'd half-forgotten it, as the original Strike team was gone. Ana was... And Reinhardt and Torbjörn had retired, albeit unwilling, at least the former had But, they weren't the only ones out there. Both Jack and Gabriel had a network - other soldiers, the few survivors of SEP who hadn't been absorbed into Overwatch. The men and women they'd served with during their career. Informants.

Those that could be trusted.

Not as many as he would like, but hopefully enough, as he sent out a coded plea for help. He didn't tell them that Jack might have left willingly, that the man he'd thought lost to the job might have gone rogue.

He just asked them to find Jack.

*

Now, he headed for the Strike Commander's room. Trying not to think about how long it had been since he'd last been there, and highly aware of the eyes on his back. His actions so far had thawed her attitude, but he wasn't forgiven. Knew that he wouldn't be until he found Jack.

The room is guarded, but he doesn't wait for them to wave him through. He'd given Petras time. Now it was his time. Inside, it's clear the room has been searched and he winces. Jack would be furious. Plus, it feels like he's stepping into a ghost's life, and it's his own fault. It doesn't stop him prowling through the room. Searching for something, anything, that would tell him what Jack was doing, and where he might be. But, it's almost like he wasn't the only one to stop living here. The room empty and lifeless. A world without its Sun.

But there is one thing.

It takes him a moment to spot it amongst the mess, and it's clearly been knocked off the bed during the search. But there is a flash of familiar blue beneath the corner of the bed, and with his heart in his mouth, Gabriel reaches for it. It's heavier than he'd expected. Jack had always carried it effortlessly, even when he had looked as though he would like to be anything but, and Gabriel's hands clench, almost ready to toss the offending uniform across the room.

He doesn't.

Instead, he smoothes over the material, noticing the sharp creases. It had obviously been folded neatly, military-style before being disturbed, and there is a deliberateness to that idea that scares him. Because it makes the idea that Jack had willingly walked away from everything, from him, seem a lot more real.

_Jack..._

He glances behind him, nods as Maria moves to stand in the doorway, a physical barrier to keep the watching eyes away, and with hands that shake more than he likes, he opens the heavy coat. There, just beneath the collar is the pocket Jack had stitched into it about a month after he'd received it. He'd asked Gabe for pointers after making himself bleed and even stitching himself to the material but refused to let him do it and Gabriel had almost forgotten about it.

Now, he fumbled with it, realising with a frown that it had been stitched shut at some point, and in a hurry if the sloppy stitches are anything to go by. Jack, what the hell are you doing? He snaps the thread easily but hesitates before opening the pocket, heart in his mouth. A heart that twists painfully in his chest when he feels something metal and draws it out. The chain in his hand mirrors the one around his own neck, but the tags... he doesn't want to look, but he has too, fingers tracing Jack's name as he studies them.

_Jack..._

*****

Gabriel has made a career of being able to hunt down hard to find people. It doesn’t matter how deeply people bury themselves, how far off the grid they try to live, there will always be a trace. A thread that he can slowly unravel.

Jack was different.

All he has is the dog tags that now hang next to his, over Petras’ efforts to take them as ‘evidence’ and a folded uniform that Jack had never want. Crumbs of a life that Gabriel has come to realise he was no longer part of, and it hurts.

But not as much as his failure.

Because there’s nothing.  
  
No ransom demands – and Gabriel knows that people could probably demand anything they wanted. It wouldn’t be paid, he would have given them bullets first. But there had been nothing, no demands, no proof of life… or death.  
  
No whispers. No plots. He’s stopped more assassination plots that he had ever told Jack, but there’s no red flags, no sudden radio silence.

Just nothing.

As though Jack had never existed.

Well, at least if you didn’t look at the media or the growing chaos that was slowly consuming the rest of Overwatch. The press had gone into a frenzy when the story had finally leaked past closed doors. Jack’s image was everywhere you looked – as were the rumours, the half-truths and outright lies.  
  
The accusations.

Half of them Gabriel has heard before. The others are…new. And he can’t help but remember Maria’s words ‘got himself into trouble more than once for going ‘too far’. And not for the first time he wonders what Jack had been doing, and how the hell he had managed to keep it from him.

_Because you weren’t looking._

He no longer flinches at the accusing voice in the back of his mind. He’s been confronted by more than one harsh truth since they’d discovered Jack was missing, and he doesn’t like the picture it’s painting. He knows it wasn’t one-sided. That Jack had chosen not to tell him, to reach out to the others – even those like Reinhardt and Torbjörn who were outside of the mess.

But, then Gabriel hadn’t given him any reason to try.

Another harsh truth was realising that even though he had argued multiple times that Overwatch would be standing long after they were forgotten when Jack said that he couldn’t leave, or step down, that just wasn’t true. He hadn’t involved himself in Overwatch’s efforts to find the Strike Commander more than necessary, trusting his own men and women far more, especially with the threads that he had been chasing for months. The whispers of agents within Overwatch that the spreading cracks were coming from inside. But even he couldn’t miss the fact that those cracks were spreading much faster now. As though the foundations themselves had been weakened.

As though Jack was gone.

If he was a betting man, he would say that Overwatch had months if it continued its current trajectory, and deep down, he knew that he should do something. That he should step up. He wouldn’t take Jack’s place – no one could – and Petras would never let him. But he had the influence. He had Blackwatch. He could do something to at least slow the decay, if not stop it.

However, that would mean admitting that he wasn’t going to find Jack.

That the days of searching, of sifting through information and data, chasing ghosts of leads and finding only dead ends.

The long nights, where he spoke to the network around the world – hope fading each time.  
  
The missions – gunfire, and blood and more loss, as he lost good men and women in the field. Searching for answers, chasing more ghosts, all on a hope.

  
That they had all been for nothing.

He couldn’t do that, and he wasn’t sure whether he was angry or relieved about that. Relief that finally he had realised what was important, even if it might be too late to say as much to Jack. Anger that it had taken this to open his eyes. Rage, that he couldn’t let go, that he couldn’t imagine ever being able to move on if there weren’t any answers.

And a tiny part of him wanted to hate Jack, especially when the whispers… his own included, asked if maybe Jack Morrison had, had enough and walked away. If this was him running away, admitting defeat and leaving the mess behind.

_Could you really do that, Jack? Could you leave it behind? Leave me behind?_

*****

Hope was a strange thing. Fleeting in some people, like a candle wick left burning for too long – bright, and then gone in a single breath or gust of wind. In others it soured, turning to anger, grief and other darker emotions, a poison that was hard to fight. And in others it lingered, flickering, fading, and then reigniting in the darkest moments. Until now, Gabriel would have put himself in that second group. The hope, the belief he’d had as part of the Strike Team and even at the birth of Overwatch had faded, corroded from too many sides until it could longer be called that.

But now, he hoped. He hoped because he wasn’t sure what he was going to do if he stopped.

He searched, long after Petras ordered Overwatch to cease its search. Ignoring orders for Blackwatch to the same, even if he covered it with a façade of obedience. He searched, when those closest to him – a short list now, began to suggest that there were more important issues. He searched, but there were no answers, no clues, no sign that Jack was still out there. Or that he was coming back, and yet still he searched.

The days had become weeks. The weeks, months.

Gabriel was slipping. He knew it. Could feel the un-anchoring deep inside himself as he lost sight of the ‘mission’, the job, his agents. Even the world seemed to fade, replaced by a lingering memory of a man that might well be dead.

Overwatch was slipping too. The cracks spreading until it felt as though one wrong breath could bring it all toppling down, and if he was honest, Gabriel had thought of doing it. Some darker part of him wanting the thing that had cost him Jack – whether willingly or not – to disappear on him. Instead, he lingered in the shadows, watching, waiting and always searching.

It wouldn’t be long now.

Overwatch was on the news again, or maybe it was Blackwatch – after all, Petras was more than willing to let them take the fall. Gabriel didn’t care, barely listening to the report as he scanned the latest reports, still hoping for something. A sighting. A message. A warning. Anything. Still, he garnered enough to know that it was bad, that everything was crumbling, a guillotine hanging over their heads as the public, the media and the U.N. demanded answers.

That was when Reinhardt contacted him.

 _“Gabriel…”_ It’s been at least a year, if not longer since he’d seen Reinhardt in person, for all they have talked about the search for Jack but he seems mostly unchanged, although there’s a strain to his smile, a light that doesn’t reach his eye. _“You’ve looked better old friend…”_

Apparently the same can’t be said for him, and Gabriel can feel it. A weariness that has crept in, the slow decay of an inevitable defeat. It doesn’t stop him from trying to force a grin, although even though he can feel for himself, it’s more of a grimace. “It’s been a long few months.” There is too much truth in those words, and there’s a pause.

_“I saw Jack.”_

They’re the words that Gabe has been waiting for. Hoping for. Yet, for a long moment, he’s frozen. Where is the relief? The joy? Hell, even the anger, he had been expecting? Instead, it takes him a minute to realise that he’s caught somewhere between fear and hurt.

Fear because ‘I saw’ means that Jack isn’t there anymore, that he’s gone again. And hurt…that it wasn’t him that Jack had come too.

“When? How?” It’s easier to focus on the facts, rather than the tangle of emotions in his chest.

_“Three days ago.”_

“Three…”

 _“He asked me to wait,”_ Reinhardt cuts over his interruption, an apology in his expression. _“He was injured, Gabriel.”_

“How badly?” The desk is creaking under his grip. He’d always known that Jack could be hurt or worse, had known what could be being done to him, but he’d always kept it distant because if he thought about it too much, the rage would bubble up. “Reinhardt?!”

 _“A gunshot wound that was already healing, some other cuts and bruises.”_ It’s meant to be reassuring, and part of Gabe does appreciate the effort. They’re not like other people. Jack can take more than most people think. But still…

“You let him leave?”

 _“When have you ever been able to stop Jack Morrison from doing anything?”_ Gabe can think of a handful of times, but admittedly his efforts then had been underhanded and personal. Jack was the most stubborn person he’d ever met, and once he was set on something… _“I did what I could and agreed to pass on a message and then he was gone. And no, I don’t know where.”_

It feels like the day Jack had disappeared all over again. He’d been so close and still slipped through their fingers. “Was he alone? Being coerced?” The words taste foul, and he already knows the answer even before Reinhardt shook his head.

Jack had left of his own accord.

He had chosen to walk away and stay away.

He had chosen to leave Overwatch and Gabriel behind.

He had chosen…

“The message?”

 _“I’m sorry.”_ Gabriel closed his eyes, and in his mind, it was Jack speaking. _“Soon, you’ll understand what I’m doing, and why it had to be this way. Until then watch your back, and…”_ There was a pause, and in his mind, he can see Jack shifting, fingers tapping against the palm of his right hand as it always did when he was nervous. _“I miss you.”_

“I miss you?” It starts as a snarl, before becoming something softer towards the end. Something easing in his chest as he opens his eyes to look at Reinhardt. “How was he really, Reinhardt?”

 _“Honestly? I’m not sure. Jack was always easier to read than you, but now … it’s like he’s put up walls, with him on one side and the rest of the world on the other.”_ Reinhardt is studying him again, weighing his words and Gabriel wonders what he must look, and sound like to warrant that kind of consideration.

“What?”

_“He looked tired, worse than you do, and…”_

“And?”

 _“Lonely? Lost? I don’t know how to put it. But I’ve never seen Jack like that before, even when Overwatch started changing.”_ There’s bitterness in that, and Gabriel knows some of it should be towards them, but then it’s gone. “ _I’m sorry, Gabriel. I should have stopped him leaving.”_

“You would have needed to chain him down. At least I know he’s alive.” That was a gift, one he had almost given up all hope of even if he hadn’t wanted to admit it. Now he could feel it again, the fading ember becoming a spark. “I’ll find him.

_“Gabriel…”_

“Call me if he contacts you again? Even if he tells you not to.” It’s a command, a tone he hasn’t used for weeks, and for the moment he feels more himself than he has since Jack disappeared, because he had something now.   
  
A sighting.

A message.

A warning.  
  
Something, but not Jack.

*****

A week later, he sees Jack.

He’d missed him leaving Germany, three days too late and he’d cursed Reinhardt for that. Then an informant had flagged a CCTV image from London, and there he is, that cursed tuft of hair as defining as any scar or mark. At least to him.

_Jack…_

He searches through every flight leaving London that day, the next day…that week. He needs to get him now; otherwise he knows that Jack will disappear again. There’s no Jack Morrison on any of the lists unsurprisingly, and nothing that screams Jack to him.

_What name would you use?_

He hates that he no longer knows how Jack thinks, hasn’t for a while. Otherwise, he would have seen this coming, would’ve known that Jack was fighting as hard as him, but in his own way.

He almost misses it.

It’s buried in the list for a flight to New York, due to leave in two days. Jacob L. Davis. It’s a name that most people wouldn’t blink at or look at twice. But Gabriel isn’t most people.

_He remembers how bright Jack’s eyes had been that night. Too bright, and not just from the fever that the latest round of injections had left him with. Jack had been lucky. His roommate Jacob had been less so. It had been messy, and Jack had seen it all. And for the first time, Gabe could see a hint of doubt in those blue eyes._

_A questioning of whether or not this was worth it._  
  
They’d never talked about Jacob after that night. Instead, Gabriel had slipped into the empty space in the room, and they’d kept going as best they could. There was no other choice. But he’d known that Jack hadn’t forgotten.

And now…

Now he had him. He knows where Jack is going to be.

He pulls rank, knows that it’s going to have far too many eyes on him. Doesn’t care. He makes it to New York before Jack’s flight - _please, let it be Jack_ \- is due and waits. He cuts communications with his team, ignores the calls from Petras, and blends in with the crowds.

He almost misses him.

A moment of distraction, or weariness and too much coffee, he’s not sure. But, something has his hair on end and he looks up, across the crowd swarming for bags on the latest flight from London, sees the tuft, blond hair…and blue eyes widening in dismay.

It’s a moment that lasts a lifetime, neither of them moving or blinking. Gabe’s mind is racing. Reinhardt had been kind in his assessment. Jack looks terrible, pale and haggard, dark shadows beneath his eyes, and he’s favouring his right side. Not enough to be obvious, but Gabe knows him better than most, can see him listing to the side and the pinched look that speaks of pain.

That gets him moving, coffee cup falling from suddenly shaking hands as he pushes forward. Shoving past the unknowing crowd. Jack moves too, lips twisting as he mouths something, and Gabriel doesn’t need to hear it to know what he’s saying.

“I’m sorry.”

Then he’s gone, a large family moving between them. Gabe snarls at them, cursing as he weaves around them and by the time he’s passed them, there’s no sign of Jack. Terror and desperation send him lurching forward because he can’t have come this close only to fail. He can’t.

It’s just like back then. 

A ghost disappearing into the night, only this is broad daylight and this time Gabriel had been right there and reaching out to him. Yet as Gabriel steps out of the airport, there’s no sign of Jack.

He’s walked away. Again.

Gabriel had been torn as to whether he was going to kiss or punch Jack first when he found him. Now, he lashes out, slamming a fist into the nearest wall and ignoring the startled cries that spread out around him, as the concrete cracks and dents. Even as he shakes off the dull ache in his knuckles, he’s searching, unable to believe that Jack could slip away like that on his watch, but he already knows it’s futile.

That he’s lost Jack again.

**

He doesn’t leave.

He can’t.

Jack is there somewhere. He knows that he’s going to be in a world of trouble when he gets back to Zurich, but he doesn’t care. Instead, he’s searching again. For Jack, and for anything that would lure Jack here of all places.

It takes him a couple of days, but he hits on one possibility, an old red flag that had gone silent for a while – a banking corporation which had, had ties to Talon and several umbrella groups, although Blackwatch had never managed to get enough evidence on them.

That’s when he sees the news.

A building in flames, with the bank’s name and logo threatening to fall off its side. And there amongst the chaos, he sees Jack, bloody and limping as he helps a woman from inside the building, before going back inside despite the attempts of the fire crews to stop him. Gabriel hears the murmurs around him. Whispers of ‘heroes’ and he bolts, because Jack is a hero and an idiot, and he can’t lose him again. It takes too long to get there, the smoke a beacon guiding him forward, the hope that had carried him this far teetering on a knife’s edge.

He arrives just in time to watch it burn. The sign crashing down in front of the entrance, sending rubble and sparks flying into the air. There’s screaming and crying. People moaning in pain. Other’s shouting orders, as the crowd and Gabriel are urged back. Names are being shouted, grief and fear and anger lashing against those trying to save their lives.

Gabriel doesn’t shout.

He doesn’t speak as he searches amongst the crowd, among the people on the curb with blankets around their shoulders and oxygen masks on, in the ambulances before they pull away.  
  
But there’s no Jack.

He finds his voice then. Moving from person to person, demanding to know if they’d seen the man who’d rushed in to help come back. Receives a dozen differing replies that tell him nothing. Still, he asks and asks. Searches the scene, and later the hospitals in the desperate hope that he had missed something. He finds nothing.

The news tells him nothing. A blurry image of Jack is posted – but no one knows anything, and it's not long before he’s presumed dead. Gabe refuses to believe, tries to tell himself that Jack could have slipped away, even as deep down he knows that Jack wouldn’t have walked away from something like this.

He doesn’t go to the morgue when they start retrieving the bodies. He doesn’t need to. The eyes of the city are on what happened, and one by one the names and faces trickle through. None of them is Jack. But there are still people missing, people that will never be accounted for.

Jack might be one of them.

Dead.

Gone.

Forgotten.

**

In the long months of searching, Gabe had tried to imagine what it would feel like to give up, to admit defeat in his efforts to find Jack. He’d never given much thought to what would happen if he lost Jack.

It was a strange half-reality. A numbness that hurt and burrowed deeper with each breath. Jack was gone. It felt less true now than it had when Jack had first disappeared. Shock. Denial. He knew the words, knew what he was feeling. It didn’t stop him from feeling it.

It didn’t stop the anger.

Because Jack had rushed back in there. He had thrown it all away, and for what?

 _I was right there, Jack,_ he screamed at the ghost in his memories. _I found you, followed you. So, why didn’t you let me in?_ He asked the bottom of his glass on the flight back to Zurich, finding no answers, and hiding the emptiness beneath another drink and another.

He doesn’t inform Overwatch or Petras. He doesn’t even tell Reinhardt and Torbjörn, for as much as he trusts them, he can’t bring himself to see their grief when his own is still locked away.  
  
He doesn’t tell the world, that the hero in the flames had been Jack Morrison, the man they had spewed lies and rumours about for months. In part, because it won’t change anything, it will just give them a target to blame everything – the failings, the cracks that are visible now, the tension in the air – on a man who can no longer defend himself.

Then there’s the truth behind the fire.

It’s a couple of days after he’s returned to Zurich. Not home, not anymore…not without Jack. He’s still in a haze, barely reacting when he’s restricted to base and informed that he will be facing a disciplinary on top of the U.N. investigations. He doesn’t care about that.

He does care about the folders that turn up on his desk. He’s not sure where they’re from, he doesn’t care, almost tossing them in the bin when he realises they’re about the fire. He doesn’t want to know. And yet, something makes him look, a spark of something deep beneath the numbness.

It’s the autopsies.  
  
Names that he recognises and not from the news, but from the files, he’d had on the bank from before… and they hadn’t died from the fire. Gunshot wounds. Blunt trauma. All the hallmarks of a brutal attack. And information that hadn’t reached the news channels.

It wakes something in Gabriel.

Especially when he realises that his main suspect from back then isn’t amongst them. He knows he’s being watched now. Knows that if his earlier suspicions, the ones that he had thought Jack wasn’t listening to were right, then he was painting a target on his back.

He doesn’t care. He doesn’t have anything else to lose.

He digs through the news reports, the police investigations, anything he can his hands on legally or illegally, and it paints a different picture. It almost looks like a Blackwatch hit, like what he had done in Rialto.  
  
But this hadn’t been Blackwatch.  
  
Or Overwatch.

It had been Jack.

Jack who had stood in his office and reamed Gabriel out for that mess and told him that they needed to toe the line as he could only do so much to protect him and Blackwatch. A lie? Or had that been the turning point? Gabriel wished that he knew. Wished that he had listened.

However, there was one detail that needled him.

The fire.

Jack had been many things, some of which Gabriel was only learning about now. But, he would never have endangered civilians. Hell, how many times had Gabe reamed him out during the crisis for endangering himself in order to protect people caught in the crossfire? How missions had nearly or had been compromised by the self-sacrificing idiot?

It didn’t make sense until it did.

*

He’s on his way back to his office after the first disciplinary hearing, cursing up a storm under his breath, agents scattering out of his path. It’s all a farce, and he’s realised that with Jack gone – even missing like the world believes – he’s the one that’s going to be served up on a silver platter for everything that’s gone wrong.

He’s prepared for that, and he’ll make them choke on the bones if that happens, even if it would be the futile defiance of a dead man.

There’s a crowd in the atrium, just as there was the day Jack had vanished although there’s no one guarding the doors this time. Instead, everyone’s attention is riveted on the large holo-screens. Gabriel ignores it, pushing through with the intention of getting to his office and hiding from the world for the rest of the day when the reporter’s words make him freeze midstep.

_“… this was an unprovoked and unauthorised attack by Overwatch that resulted in the deaths of civilians going about their everyday lives.”_

Lifting his head, he finds himself looking at the familiar burnt-out remains of the bank, the numbness splintering. It hurts. Then it burns, anger ripping through the hurt as the camera swings to the one face that had been missing from the files _. “Chairman Bianchi, you were there during the attack, although this is the first that the media and indeed the world is hearing about this.”_

 _“That was to protect the investigations, and due to my own injuries, which are still healing and will keep me out of action for a while yet.”_ Gabriel can see the bandages visible at the neck of his shirt, and the way he holds himself gingerly. A nugget of truth then, in what is sure to be a well-rehearsed lie. However, what catches his attentions are the bandages around his hands – not casts, so not broken like they would’ve been if Jack had done it.

_Burns?_

A terrible suspicion forms, as he listens to the reporters, make appropriate sympathetic noises about the injuries and the loss of friends and colleagues. _“Now, from what we believe, it was your testimony that pointed the finger towards the already troubled Overwatch, and considering that their Press Office and Director have already refuted that any mission was authorised or active at the time, what makes you sure that it was Overwatch?”_

 _“Because I recognised the man that pointed the gun at me…”_ There’s a pause for dramatic effect, and Gabriel is as taut as a bow as he reads the triumph in Bianchi’s expression and the hidden anger. “ _It was Strike Commander – or should that be former – Strike Commander Morrison, who burst into our meeting and opened fire – killing several of my colleagues, before setting fire to the building in the hopes of hiding the evidence of what he’s done.”_ Bianchi’s hands clenched at that, twisting together – and Gabriel was sure.

Jack hadn’t set the fire, this man had…

To hide his own activities?

Or for this moment, when he could pin everything on Overwatch…on Jack?

There are gasps and whispers around him, and those that have recognised him are edging back. He ignores them because Bianchi is continuing, voice growing stronger with false righteousness. “ _It was a brutal, unprovoked attack, and still the U.N. has failed to take decisive measure against Overwatch, and I now lay this tragedy at their feet and ask that they step up. Overwatch is clearly unfit for purpose and has become a danger to the public. And as a member of that same public, I am asking, no demanding retribution for what happened here. Retribution that will shake them to their very foundation.”_

The anger was breaking through now. Vitriol colouring his words, and yet the reporter was nodding in agreement, and there were cheers and jeers from the crowd of media and onlookers around them as they agreed.

And it was spreading. A low buzzing of dissent beginning in the atrium, as the cracks spread, doubts and fear turning to anger.

And beneath it all, the dull, muffled boom of an explosion deep within the base.

*****

*****

Bianchi is his first kill.

Five months, three weeks, two days and eight hours into his new existence.

It isn’t quick. It isn’t pleasant. The Reaper has questions, a well of anger of grief, and a body that practically vibrates with a hunger that isn’t entirely his own.

Gabriel had always been good at interrogations, and some of the darker rumours about him and Blackwatch had been true. Reaper takes that to a whole new level – perhaps it’s because of what he is now, a body undone and remade a dozen times or more a day. Or, because some spark of humanity has been lost, but it’s child play to Bianchi apart piece by piece.

He has to give the man his due. He hadn’t gone down without a fight – a dozen bullet wounds from him and his omnic bodyguard (now a smoking wreck in the corner) are already healing. And he holds his tongue far longer than Reaper had expected.

It’s only when the Reaper’s claws carve deep within his abdomen that he surrenders the first name.

More follow, each one carved out with blood and pain.

Through it all, Gabriel is numb.

He remembers that day with vivid clarity – the angry crowd around him, the muffled boom that had only been the beginning.

He remembers the panic and fear.  
  
The anger.

_He hadn’t died a hero. He hadn’t cared enough by that point. Even as everything that he and Jack had built together had come crumbling down around his ears, all he’d been able to think was ‘good’. In his eyes, Overwatch was as much to blame, as those pointing fingers at a dead man, and he had died cursing it and hoping that he would at least be able to see Jack again._

_He hadn’t even been granted that._

_He couldn’t remember what it had felt like, yet when he tried all he could see and feel was darkness. Loneliness. As though Jack hadn’t been waiting for him. He tried not to think about it too much._

_And there was plenty to distract him._

_This half-life. This second chance… that’s what he’d been told it was, but considering he’d had smoking, clawed fingers wrapped around Moira’s neck at the time, he wasn’t going to lend much credence to her words.  
  
_

_He was alive, but not. Human, but not._

_A ghost._

_He might have remained like that, and for a time he did, languishing in the hidden lab. Moira didn’t banish him, whether through some pang of sympathy or the chance to study him further. But with time, the hunger grew, one that couldn’t be touched by the food she gave him – meals that tasted like ash on his dead tongue._

_It was her lab assistant, a face he recognised vaguely – that spelt a change in the wind. He had been watching him, the familiarity bugging him, and it was as he turned to leave that he realised. He had been there in Overwatch, with Angela, and then later with Moira._

_He had been part of it._

_The rage was surprising. A ray of sunlight breaking through the haze he’d been in, a fire coursing through his body. He still couldn’t remember moving. But he could remember the scream, as claws and nanites tore through flesh, chasing something…and then he had been warm and full in a way that he hadn’t been since waking. He’d dropped the man, alive…but missing something, a spark, a touch of life._

_He didn’t wait for Moira, not trusting himself not to kill her. Not sure that he would regret it if he did. Instead, he slipped away into the night – more of a ghost than ever, and less. Because, that familiarity, that fleeting glimpse of the past had roused something in him._

_A thirst…_

_Not for answers, because none could undo what had been done. That could ease his loss._

_But for revenge._

_Now, he sought out the world. Watching the news. Listening to the conversations around him._

_Overwatch was gone. Not just Zurich, but the entire organisation had been shut down, accused of crimes against humanity and there in black and white he saw his and Jack’s names and faces. Everything pinned on them, and everything they had really done forgotten._

_Once upon a time, he had expected it. Now it infuriated him._

_They had given Overwatch, and the world everything and for what? Jack dead. And Gabriel…well. He might as well have been. And yet, he couldn’t let it go. He couldn’t forget or forgive, and his mind turned to the man that had put one of the last nails in the coffin._

_Bianchi._

_It transpired there had been an ‘investigation’ after all the world had heard his words, and plea for retribution just before Zurich had gone up in flames, and it had been too blatant to ignore. But, he and all his known associates had been cleared and apologised to by Petras and the remaining figures of Overwatch just before the U.N. had shut Overwatch down._

_Gabriel wasn’t convinced, and the Reaper was hungry._

So, here he was.

Bianchi whimpering at his feet. A list of names committed to memory. And a bloody, broken confession, gurgled between ragged breaths, that he had known about the bombs. That Talon was involved. And that it had been planned long before Jack had gone hunting.

There was no satisfaction in hearing the truth. No thrill at the thought of the hunt to come, although he knew that he couldn’t stop now.

He was angry and hungry…

Reaper paced around the man. He wouldn’t last long, that warmth – a glow that couldn’t be seen – was flickering, and part of him wanted to reach out and devour it there and then. But that would be too quick, too easy.

It would be merciful.

And Gabriel was done being merciful.

He built a pyre out of the desk and paperwork – most of it lies – and the money he’d found stashed when he’d searched the room, aware of the eyes that tracked him as he worked.

“I always thought…it would be…him…”

“Him?” Reaper asked, looking up at the ragged whisper, finally feeling a flicker of something akin to satisfaction as he watched Bianchi’s eyes flicker, blood speckling his lips as he spoke.

“…Morrison…”

“He’s dead,” he said it flatly. Distantly. Because for all his claims that he was something less than human now, hearing Jack’s name still hurt, a wound on his heart that refused to heal. Especially hearing this man say his name.

“N-no,” Bianchi laughed, an awful gurgling sound, that sprayed blood across his front. “H…he…ran...”

“LIAR!”

It’s like the lab all over again, the rage taking over him completely. A haze settling over his vision, as every part of his body vibrates with the need for revenge, and blood…and to feed. He ignores the next whispered words, as he ignites the pyre, waiting for the flames to spread and grow. Trying not to remember how he had least seen Jack framed against a different fire.

“You escaped last time,” he says at last, once the flames are high enough for his liking, before going to Bianchi. Hauling the man up by the throat, and leaning in close so that they are eye to eye. “You won’t get that chance this time.”

“H-he’s a-alive…” The words are forced out, a weak thread of sound against his tightening grip and the Reaper snarls, swallowing back another denial as he twists and launches Bianchi into the flames without hesitation.

He’s unmoving as the man screams and twists in the flame. Unmoved by the sound or the smell. Locked in place, as he watches him burn… as he’d watched Jack burn. As he’d burned, buried deep beneath Zurich.

He consumes the warmth that escapes, an almost visible orb that fills him like no food can as Bianchi eventually falls still and silent in the flames. He leaves then. Not looking back, even as a tiny, insidious doubt creeps in beneath the rage and sense of being full.

_Could Jack Morrison still be alive?_

***

He’s not sure that he wants the answer to that question.

The Reaper doesn’t, trying to bury it beneath the burning anger and the hunger that is never satiated, no matter how many lives he takes. Gabriel lets him. He hunts, working his way down the list that Bianchi had given him with ruthless efficiency, building up another list as he does.

It’s a never-ending web. Some distant part of his mind knows that some of them might be unwilling accomplices, maybe even innocent. He knows that he should care, that in the past he would have.

That Jack would have.

That’s a dangerous line of thought, skirting too close to the questions and doubts that linger despite his best efforts. And so he buries it. Buries that spark of humanity. That human hesitation. It’s freeing and soul-destroying at the same time, and he feels himself become a little more broken, a little less human.

More Reaper, than Gabriel.

That’s fine. It’s easier. And there’s no one left for him to hold himself together for.

Ana is dead.

McCree and Genji left.

Reinhardt and Torbjörn had made lives for themselves.

And Jack…

Jack had died a hero, even if the rest of the world couldn’t see it.

Simple. Finished. Painful.

But as much as he wants that to be the end of it, it isn’t.

He kills familiar faces a week later. Former Blackwatch agents now in the colours of Talon. He’s not sure whether it’s the visible evidence of their betrayal and his mistakes, or the fact that the questions and doubts are louder than ever, but the rage bubbles over.

He paints the room red, a feral beast let loose. And by the time he’s finished they don’t resemble anything human, nothing left to identify them by – after all, why should they get the recognition that he and Jack never got.

And he’s finally full.

That turns out to be a mistake because the Reaper is content for the time being, seeping into the background and that gives him time to think, to question and doubt.

_Could Jack really be alive?_

He still wanted to deny it. To push it aside as a final ditch attempt by Bianchi to either save his own life or to hurt him in some twisted way. The former had failed, but the latter…

He walked away from the scene, not caring that he was leaving a bloody trail in his wake. Unaware of the eyes watching him from the darkness, caught between the past and the present, and the terrifying, aching hope that he could feel trying to well up.

_There hadn’t been a body…_

But then again, Jack wasn’t the only one who had been unaccounted for in the fire.

_But Jack was a SEP graduate, he wasn’t like most people…_

He shouldn’t have died to something like that, although they’d both learnt the hard way that the enhancements couldn’t protect you from everything.

_He wouldn’t have let Gabriel believe that he was dead…_

That was the sticking point. There was a time when Gabriel would have wholeheartedly believed that, just as strongly as he hadn’t wanted to believe that Jack had walked away willingly until the evidence had been staring him in the face.

Jack had already come close to that lie. Those long, endless months of searching had left Gabriel asking if maybe Jack was dead more than once, at least in his own thoughts. Was, it really a stretch to think that he would have taken it further?

The old Gabriel would have said no.

Now, he couldn’t completely deny it…and he hated it, as much as he hoped that maybe it hadn’t been a lie.  
  
That maybe, Jack was still alive.

*

If he is, then he’s done a bloody good job of hiding all traces of it.

For the moment at least, the Reaper allows him to take the reins, and against his better judgement and cursing himself, Jack and Bianchi every step of the way, Gabriel takes a walk through the shades of his old life.

He goes back to Zurich.

He’d refused to return before, snapping and snarling when Moira had suggested it one day. Why would he go back there? He wasn’t going to find answers in that rubble. It would be like rubbing salt in the wound. And it would mean looking at what had been done to their legacy…to Jack’s legacy.

He still doesn’t expect to find answers. But Jack had always been a sentimental fool. They both were in their own way, and the tiny part of him that hoped that Jack was alive, hoped that just maybe Zurich would draw Jack into the open.

It was like walking over his own grave as he slipped through the barricades that had been built around them rubble. Eerie and unsettling in a way that had Reaper on edge too, a growl in the back of his mind.

He had died here.  
  
He should have stayed dead. The thought slipped in as he picked his way through what had been his home, his job… their life. Beyond the rescue efforts, and removing sensitive supplies and information, it had been left as it had fallen.

Abandoned.

Just like him and Jack.

It would be a fitting place for him to stay. One ghost amongst hundreds. He can practically feel them pressing in on him. Are they angry that he’s still alive? That he had hidden what had happened to Jack? That he had believed in him, even when all fingers pointed at him?

Movement.

Human footsteps amongst the rubble. Barely audible. Someone with skill then. A hunter, he amends a moment later, tracking the warmth that he now knows is their soul, Reaper stirring again in the back of his mind, the hunger returning.

If they expect an easy kill they’re in for a surprise.

_But, what if it was Jack…?_

That stays his hand, guns half-formed. He doesn’t call out though, unable to find the voice to call out Jack’s name. Still, he hopes…prays in a way that he hadn’t since that day trapped in the rubble, when he’d reached out to some higher power, begging for the chance to see Jack one last time.

His stalker stops, waiting just out of sight. Daring him.

Gabriel breaks, his hope stronger than the rage and the hunger simmering beneath the surface.

“Jack…?” It sounds wrong. Foreign. Maybe it’s because he’s changed, his voice ruined by the transformation to this. Or possibly, because he still doesn’t quite believe. Can’t believe until he sees Jack with his own eyes.

There’s a pause.

Rubble shifting. The footsteps moving closer, a shadow breaking from the shelter of a wall. It’s not Jack, the disappointment slides into place like a lead weight, and Reaper surges to the surface, guns forming as he snarls out a wordless threat. It’s enough to stop them in their tracks, but not enough to silence them.

“A dead man, calling for a ghost. It’s almost ironic.” He recognises the voice, and as she steps out into the open, rifle levelled at him, he recognises her too or rather the woman she had been. Another ghost.

Amélie Lacroix. Widowmaker.

So, Talon had finally come calling. Unsurprising after all the blood he’d shed. And they’d sent one ghost after another. He almost wants to laugh – but settles for growling, circling her, ready to dissipate at the first sign of her taking a shot at him. “What do you want?”

“He’s dead.” It’s emotionless, and somehow crueller for it, and he knows that she sees his flinch. “As are you. Talon can offer you a…”

“A life?”

It’s not Gabriel that interrupts, although the question echoes his own. The rough voice that had cut in, tugging at something in his thoughts. A familiarity. A spark…

“Jack…”

The sound of the gunshot is deafening.

As is the sharp grunt of pain that follows, and Gabriel is already moving, rushing forward as a peal of laughter rings out. It’s strange enough it gives him pause.

Gives him clarity.

Gaze darting from the man who had just emerged into the open before the shot. The man – not Jack, because he can’t let himself hope. He can’t, even though he does. And Widowmaker, her eyes too bright even as the laughter tails off.

And whose gun is still pointed at him.

The realisation is creeping. A chill, deeper than the fingers of death that still hold him in their embrace, settling in as he glances down at the smoking gun in his hand, banishing it with a thought, before lifting his head.

“Jack…?” It’s a question. A plea. And a denial.

The rage is there he realises in the silence that greets his question. Quieter. Simmering. It’s his anger this time, rather than Reaper’s, and more potent for it. And it grows, an ember becoming a spark… as the silence is broken by a rough, bark of pained laughter.

“You shot me.” Gabriel can’t deny it. Doesn’t try to, even though part of him – the one that hoped, and prayed and needed Jack to still be alive, cries out denials.

He’d always wondered what he’d do when… if he saw Jack face to face again. Had envisioned kissing him. Punching him.

Not shooting him.

“You left me,” he retorts, one eye on Widowmaker, the other on the man… Not Jack, it can’t be Jack. It has to be Jack. He doesn't know if he wants it to be Jack at this point.  
  
It is Jack.

One hand pressed to his shoulder, blood welling between his fingers. The other reaching up to remove a visor and mask that almost has Gabriel snorting in amusement – the sound lost in a sharp intake of breath, as it clatters to the ground.

There are changes. Different from his, for which he’s…grateful…he thinks.

Jack looks older, the strain that had been there the last time he had seen him, etched into his face now in deep lines and silvering of the hair around his ears. He wears it well, though, and the eyes that meet his searching gaze are the same vibrant blue that he remembers.

And there are the scars. Jagged lines that are vivid against the pale skin and Gabriel’s fingers twitch, itching to reach out and soothe, to learn these marks of a life that he hadn’t been part of. Instead, he curls his fingers into a fist. “You let me believe that you were dead.”

The spark is a flame now, and Reaper is there too, roused by the flickering of two souls close by. Less, interested in Widowmaker who is watching them both, wary but still amused. It’s Gabriel who snarls at her before he takes a step towards Jack.

“Gabe…”

The nickname cuts deep, the emotion in that single word slices deeper. Jack sounds torn between regret and longing, hope and fear. In the past, Gabriel would have gone to him. Would have tried to soothe and comfort. To protect.

That was before.

Before the weeks and months of arguments that said too much, and conversations that said too little. That was before Jack had gone missing, leaving Gabriel suspended between hope and despair, unable to stop hunting.

Before he had walked away, again and again.

Before, he had disappeared in those flames, leaving Gabriel to mourn him and face the fall alone.

“Don’t call me that,” he’s not sure if it’s him that snarls, or Reaper. Doesn’t care. The flame is a wildfire now, rage cutting through the hope and longing that had drawn him back here. “Don’t you dare.” He feels no satisfaction when Jack flinches, expression crumbling.

He just feels empty. Numb.

Everything has boiled down to this moment, and it’s different than he had imagined. There’s no relief. And the joy, if he feels it, is lost beneath everything else. Because, while Jack is alive and right there in front of him, it feels like they’re further apart than ever.

“Just tell me why.”

Jack looks lost, and for a moment Gabriel wonders if he’d honestly thought that he could just come back. That Gabriel would just welcome him back with open arms. Ignoring the small part of him that wants to. That wants nothing more than to close the gap between them and hold Jack, to feel for himself that he’s alive.

That he’s really here.

He doesn’t move, and he’s always been the more patient of the two and it’s not long before Jack looks down, whether to look at the wound that neither of them had expected Gabriel to inflict, or just to avoid his gaze. “Gabriel…”

Gabriel doesn’t speak. He won’t give Jack that out, not this time.

“Would you have listened?” Jack asks, finally. “Would you have let me go, and do what I needed to do?”

“You didn’t give me a chance!”

“Yes, I did…” Quiet. Not accusing, although Gabriel can hear an echo of Maria’s words in Jack’s. “Maybe, not enough chances, but I tried…”

Gabriel thinks back to that time. The conversations that went in circles, the regret, the reminders that things were different now, that their hands were tied… that Jack’s hands were tied. That he couldn't and wouldn't endorse the methods that they both knew were needed. The arguments that had seemed never-ending and at the point that Jack had disappeared, had been the only form of communication they shared – personal wounds inflicted under cover of professional differences, with both giving as good as they got.

Those are painful memories, and even with everything that has happened, he can feel himself bristling, old anger bleeding into the present. “When? When did you give me a chance Jack? You just left. You left me with nothing but these…” The dog tags are still around his neck, and now he tears them off, flinging them on the ground between them. “I didn’t know why you had left, or if you were okay. And then when you resurfaced, when you knew that I was still searching, you kept walking away from me.”

“Gabe…”

“I thought you were fucking dead Jack!” Gabriel snarls, and this time there is satisfaction – his and Reaper’s when Jack flinches and then winces. “I mourned you. I hated you…” That last bit gives him pause, makes the Reaper purr in the back of his mind, the anger climbing higher.

“We should both just have stayed dead,” he whispers into the quiet that follows his snarl. Something shifts in his chest, the flickering flame of hope that he had protected for so long, wavering.

Fading.

Dying.

There had been numerous times when he’d thought about walking away as the arguments escalated, the gulf between them widening. But he’d stayed because it was Jack and it was them.

And then Jack had just walked away.

He could see it in Jack’s face now, his expressions are still as easy to interpret as they had been back then. He considers the dawning realisation, the fear that consumes the hope, and as Jack finally moves towards him, reaching out as he hadn’t back then, Gabriel reaches his own realisation.

Now it was his turn to walk away.

“You never gave me a chance or a choice,” he tells the ghost of his own life, before turning towards Widowmaker who had been watching and waiting, with the patience of a spider aware that the fly was always going to come to it, an eyebrow rising as he looks at her. “Tell Talon that I will be in touch.”

“Gabriel! What are…?”

“It’s your turn to chase, Jack,” Gabriel lifts a hand, smoke swirling as the nanites shift, and harden, forming a mask over his face. Glancing back at the other man, Reaper purring at the broken expression that greets his words. “Prove to me that it was worth it. That all this-” His gesture takes in both of them, and the ruined remains of their life. “Was worth what you did. What you put me through.”

He disappears then, slipping away through the shadows. Burying the urge to look back, or stop as he hears Jack shout his name with the same desperation that he had felt the day he’d watch Jack disappear into the flames. He hides it all. Let’s Reaper burn it away with his rage, and anger and doesn’t look back, and his last thought as Gabriel is - _come for me Jack._


	2. Chapter 2

The Soldier stumbled, blood in his mouth and a dull ringing in his ears. It was more than he had felt in days, and he barked a laugh, spitting the blood onto the floor before staggering upright and making the universal ‘come at me’ gesture.

His opponents weren’t about to ignore the invitation and rushed in, lulled by the stench of booze and the fact that he had barely fended off their first attack.

That was their mistake.

Jack waited. A cobra in the grass, and as soon as the first one was within reach, he struck. He took the punch, knowing that it would barely bruise the skin and hating it, and seized the front of the man’s shirt lifting him in a single movement and whirling, using him as a battering ram that took down the second man as their heads cracked together.

It was a good sound.

His teeth were bared in a bloody grin as he launched his prisoner into the opposite wall, cocking his head to the side as he heard bones break on the impact before the man slid to the ground in a boneless heap. It was disappointing, he’d wanted more and…

A groan, and the shifting of metal and he sprang to the side as a metal pipe swung through the space where his head had been. Idly he wondered if it would have done anything, before he ducked under a second swing, impressed at the aim as the man he’d hit with the first tottered and stumbled, looking more drunk than Jack could get these days.

It still wasn’t going to be enough, and this time he stepped into the swing. Letting the pipe crack against his shoulder, the pain sharp, but enough to slow him as he reached up and grabbed it as it came for him again. It was cold, or maybe he was too hot – caught in the feverish delight of the fight.

Still, he grasped it tight and yanked. It was never going to be a contest, and a second later, he was holding it up in front of him.

He’d intended to bend it, almost hungry for the fear that he knew would greet the gesture, but just as the metal began to give, his opponent charged with a sluggish shout and as he moved to counter it there was a sharp, burning pain in his side.

He hissed, even as he savoured the pain. It would fade quickly, it always did, but for now, he embraced the burn, tilting his head to look at the slim blade jammed deep in his side. “Not bad,” he muttered before he twisted – tearing at the wound – and brought the stolen pipe down on the stabber’s head. It was a killing blow, over in a split second, although they got their revenge in kind as they tore the knife free as they fell, and this time he cursed the pain.

“You killed him,” the other man was backing up now, arms raised in front of him as though that could shield him from what was coming. Jack tilted his head, studying the fear in his eyes.

The terror.

There was a time it would have bothered him, stopping him in his tracks. Now he wanted it, and he took a step forward and then another, deliberately hefting the bloodied pipe.

The man bolted, and Jack laughed and gave chase. Even injured, there was no way he could outrun Jack, and the soldier wasn’t in a merciful mood, closing the distance in easy strides that each sent a fresh throb of pain through his side.

It was a short chase, too short.  
  
And the first blow took the man down, sending him crashing into a puddle on the floor. The second broke his collar. The third the arm that he had thrown up in a desperate attempt to save himself.  
  
The fourth killed him - the sound of it echoing.

The fifth blow was anger, pure and simple, a rage that Jack couldn’t give voice, fuelled by the bloodshed and the thrill of the fight.

“What are you doing, Jack?”

Jack didn’t look up at the voice, but he did stop, taking a shuddering breath before letting the pipe fall to the ground as he rose to his feet. He didn’t look at the shadow that wasn’t a shadow as he turned back and searched the ground for the visor that had been torn off in the first attack, and more importantly the bottle he’d set aside when he’d realised, they were coming for him.

He could feel the burning gaze watching his every movement as he took a large swallow of whiskey, mourning the fact that even the burn was reduced by what SEP had done to him, and then taking another sip, before finally turning towards to the watching Shadow. “To our health.”

That drew a growl from the darkness, a glimmer of crimson showing before the Reaper stepped out into the open, bone mask firmly in place as he glanced at the bloody mess that Jack had made for a long moment before looking back at Jack.

“What was the point of this Jack?” He demanded. “You called me a monster, and yet.” He gestured at the bodies, throwing the word that Jack had dared to spit at him the first time he’d seen the Reaper feed, taking pleasure in the way Jack flinches.

“At least I need to feed, whereas you…”

“Shut up,” Jack snarls, launching the bottle at Reaper who dissipated leaving it to smash harmlessly against the wall as the Reaper re-materialized in Jack’s space, easily avoiding the fist that swung towards him. It was an old dance. One, they both knew all too well.

It’s Jack who breaks first, stepping back out of Reaper’s space with a weary sigh that has the mercenary shifting as though to reach out before stopping himself. “You told me to chase, so don’t you dare question my methods. Especially after what you’re up to these days.”

It’s angry and accusing, but it’s a weak blow compared to his usual snarling vitriol and the Reaper tenses. Watching, waiting. He’s ready for another attack – physical or verbal. He’s not prepared for the sight of Jack stumbling, barely catching himself on the edge of a dumpster, one hand slipping to press against his side.

“Jack…”

“Don’t.” Reaper hadn’t even realised he’d taken a step forward until Jack jerked around to glare at him. “I’m none of your concern anymore, remember that.” It sounds more like he’s trying to remind himself, but it's enough to hold the Reaper in place as Jack turns away again.

He hates the part of him that aches to follow, and he’s almost relieved when Jack hesitates at the entrance to the alley and glances back at him. “Check your files…” Jack gestured at the bodies, blank-faced in the face of what he’d done. “I’m sure that will answer your questions,” he adds, and then he’s gone, melting away into the night.

Leaving the Reaper with more questions than answers, and an all too familiar ache in his chest and more than one regret.

**

Jack had been right.

Reaper snarled as he stared at the screen, at the faces of the men he had watched Jack murder. They weren’t big players, probably people that he would have overlooked in his own efforts, especially with their existing ties to Talon.

But there in black and white were their ties to Bianchi, to the financial web that he was only just getting a handle on through the crumbs he found in Talon.

He’s chasing. It was a relief, for all that the sight of Jack in that alley had scared him. It was a reminder of far they had both fallen and changed.

But it wasn’t enough.

He wasn’t ready to forgive, for all that he had wanted to go to Jack in that alley. The distance between them destroying him as much as the constant failing and rebuilding of his body, and the path he had chosen.

Keep chasing me, Jack…

Please…

**

Jack’s side was barely healed. It had taken too long this time, a slowing that he was aware of but choosing to ignore, and he had been chafing at the bit to get back on the hunt.  
  
The hunt.  
  
A small part of him baulked at calling it that, even though that was what it was. He wasn’t looking for justice. He wanted answers and revenge.  
  
He wanted Gabriel.

It had been Gabriel who had nearly been the undoing of all his plans when he had first realised just how deep the cracks in Overwatch ran. He’d wanted to reach out, had tried to as best he could with all the eyes on him.

But, there had been too many walls between them – from both of them. And part of it had been fear. He knew that what he was doing was risky. Had known the moment he took the uniform off that day, that he was destroying his career, the life he’d had. He hadn’t wanted to drag Gabriel into that. Not, least because Gabriel was his weakness, and far too many people knew that. He had been willing to sacrifice anything to find the truth, to save what they had built with Overwatch. His career. His life. His freedom if caught.

His resolve hadn't lasted. Whispers of Gabriel's efforts to find him reaching his ears, even as he drifted searching for answers, and in the end it had been too much. He was tired and lonely, and as the saying goes, the truth hurt.

With each lie he unravelled and each truth he found, he was forced to realise how distant he had become as SC. He had been blind to so much, deaf to the warnings - & so much of that had come from Gabriel.  
  
And yet the man was still looking for him, still chasing despite all that.

And so he reached out, a moment of weakness of longing. He knew that it wasn't fair - on either of them or Reinhardt for that matter, but he couldn't stop himself.  
  
He needed at least one person to know that he hadn't abandoned them. That there was a reason for what he was doing

It had been a mistake

Foolishly, he had hoped that it would be enough. For him. For Gabriel. He hadn't expected Gabriel to find him, and seeing him again... it had hurt because there in flesh and blood he could see the cost of his decision. The exhaustion and shadows he had inflicted. The hurt.

Leaving had destroyed him.  
  
It had also made him reckless. He'd rushed into the attack on Bianchi - needing it to be over. Wanting something to vent everything on.  
  
That had been his breaking point.  
  
The moment when SC Morrison had died, and the soldier had been born.

The fire had been unexpected, and Bianchi had slipped through his fingers - a mistake. A failure. Another weight on his shoulders.

He hadn't thought twice about helping the people caught up in the mess. Yet, it had been empty. His thoughts locked on the hunt, even more than his failure. Death had been the easy choice.

Something had changed, he had changed. Going back wasn't an option, and he knew that Gabriel wouldn't accept that and that walking away wouldn't be enough this time.

And so he 'died', killing off Jack Morrison in one last 'heroic act' that most of the world would never know. He knew Gabriel would hate him for it - could imagine the ways his name would be cursed.

It was better than Gabriel, getting to see the monster he could feel himself becoming.

The monster he had become.

He had been killing the day that Zurich went up in flames. Tearing his way through what official reports had listed as a decommissioned base – once used by the Strike team, and later by early Overwatch – and but which had actually fallen into Talon hands.

He’d been bloodied and bruised, and an almost wild grin on his face as stepped around the bodies on the floor and reaching for the console. He’d learned the hard way, that they always had systems in place to wipe anything useful as soon as an intrusion was detected – and even though he’d hit hard and fast, he knew he didn’t have long.

He’d almost missed it.

He’d been looking for financial trails, supply routes, anything to point him to the next part of his hunt. He didn’t care how small, how insignificant. He couldn’t go back to his old life, so he would take down everything he could to make sure that Overwatch…

That Gabriel was safe.

It was a blueprint that caught his attention, the layout as familiar as the back of his hand.

Zurich.

With a dozen locations marked on the map, almost as though…

Jack couldn’t remember the last time he’d moved that fast. He didn’t try to cover his tracks, he didn’t think about the information slipping through his fingers, all he could see was Gabriel standing across the airport from him… chasing him despite everything.

He was too late.

It had taken him a couple of hours to reach civilisation, and there had been no missing the news. It had been on every screen, every pair of lips.

Zurich was gone.

Gabriel was gone.

He’d been avoiding the news, especially anything linking to Overwatch ever since his ‘death’, a selfish attempt to try and convince himself that it hadn’t been a mistake to walk away. Then, as his knees had crumbled beneath him, there had been no hiding from his actions, from his choices, his mistakes.

He’d walked away to try and protect them.

He’d failed.

If he hadn’t been a monster before. He was then. He didn’t ask questions, he didn’t search for information. He forgot about the truth about the reasons for what had been done.

He didn’t care.

People had always said that he was Gabriel’s conscience, the one that kept his partner from going too far.

They’d been wrong.

Without Gabriel, even if he couldn’t have been with him, Jack had no foundation. No anchor. And it has scared him – there had been terror beneath the anger on the long nights, on the days spent covered in blood that wasn’t his own.

It had been fear, not sentiment that had driven him back to Zurich.

He hadn’t expected to find anything that day. No answers, no ghosts…no peace, but he’d had to go, in the distant hope that he could remember something of who he’d been before all this.

Instead, he’d found Gabriel.

A Gabriel far removed from the man in his memory. A ghost, a shadow… a monster like him, but different, always different. A Gabriel who had shot him, and who had been angrier than Jack could ever have imagined, and yet he couldn’t blame him.

He knew what he’d done. He knew even before he gave his answers that it wasn’t going to be enough, and yet he had been unprepared for Gabriel choosing to walk away with Widowmaker – choosing to turn to their enemy over him.

Whatever had been between them, broken because he had decided to die.

And yet it was Gabriel who gave him a foundation, an anchor once more with his whispered order for Jack to chase him this time, to prove that it had been worth it.

A mission.

A hunt, his mind corrected.

****

Gabriel hesitated before stepping into the room, for once glad of the mask that hid his expression, knowing that there was no way he could hide his reaction this time, as he studied the bodies of the Talon Agents strewn around the room.

Only three of them had managed to draw their weapons, not that it had saved them. And he supposed he should be glad that they showed worse damage than those that had caught of guard, as it showed a degree of mercy.

But not enough. Not enough to detract from the fact that these agents hadn’t just been killed.

They’d been slaughtered.

He only recognised one of them by name and a couple of others by face, but he knew for a fact that they were nothing more than muscle in the Talon ranks. They hadn’t been privy to any useful information, and their deaths would be brushed aside.

So, why did he kill them?

And why was he so sure that it was Jack? There was no evidence to tie the other man to the scene in front of him, and it a mess, nothing like the work of the man he’d known as SC. Jack had always been reserved in his attacks, highly aware of what his strength could do.

And he’d been driven by mercy. A belief that you needed something more and less than violence to make a difference. That had been the reason behind many of their arguments, especially as Blackwatch and the changing world had forced Gabriel to take a darker path.

But…

He remembered how Jack had been in the alley. The wild laughter, the violence. The shadow of a monster looming within the heart of the man he couldn’t bring himself to truly hate, even now.

And it scared him.

As though deep down, he was the one still chasing Jack, with the other man threatening to slip through his fingers all over again. The shadow of what could see Jack slowly becoming, far more terrifying than the idea of him dying.

Will I ever be free of him? He wondered, crouching beside the first body. The soul was long gone, they were hours behind Jack, and he knew better than anyone that there would be no trail to follow. No way to prepare for when he would strike next. And he would.

The Reaper knew that hunger all too well.

It was bloodlust and fury, and a deep burning need that couldn’t be denied no matter how hard you tried. And he would have given anything to protect Jack from that. Which, he supposed was an answer to that question, in and of itself.

It just didn’t tell him what he was supposed to do now.

“Clean up this mess and see what was taken.” The Reaper ordered as he rose once more, glancing over his shoulder at the unfortunate agents that had accompanied him. He wasn’t sure that there was anything to find, but Gabriel was clinging to the hope that there was a reason for this.

A purpose.

A goal.

Even if it had only been to cut down the forces that he was going to be going up against if he continued on this path.

He growled at them when they hesitated. That had them rushing to obey, and he stepped back. He didn’t care about the agents that had died. Or what information if any Jack had got his hands on. He just had to feign concern for that, because he knew the questions would come as soon as he returned to base.

Another lie in the act.

Another part of the monster he had become, and there it was... the root of his problem, the thing he did care about.

Just how far had Jack already fallen?


	3. Chapter 3

Jack had stopped counting.

As a child, he had counted the animals in the fields around the farm. That had been how he’d first learned about death, questioning why his counts never tallied up.

When he’d joined the army, before he’d even heard of SEP, he counted the lives that he took because he didn’t want to forget. Not that death and bloodshed, but the fact that these were people, worried about what he might become if he forgot that.

During SEP he counted the soldiers around him. It was a number that had dwindled rapidly, and each loss, each subtraction was a reminder of what could happen to him. Death loomed close then, more and less than a number.

During the Crisis, he had tracked his kills. A tally in the back of his mind, because each Omnic he took down was more lives saved, and another step forward.

Afterwards, as Overwatch rose from the ashes of the crisis, he counted the men and women under his command. He marked each loss, each injury. On paper, they were just figures, numbers for him to juggle and worry about, but in life they were people, and he counted each one separately. Each one as vital as the next.

He wasn’t quite sure when he’d stopped counting. Had it been when he’d seen the news about Zurich, the numbers in the back of his mind crumbling in front of the enormity of what had been lost? Or had it been that day in the shade of Zurich when the one person that had mattered, the one life he had still been able to count as his responsibility turned and walked away?

Or had it been washed away by the blood he spilt since then, the numbers and faces, lost in the bloodlust that flooded him these days?

He wasn’t sure.

He was just acutely aware of it at that moment, as his fingers tightened around the Talon agent’s throat, staring into the man’s eyes, seeing the terror as blood vessels began to burst. A person, he thought briefly, grip loosening for a moment.

_One,_ he thought before ruthlessly tightening his grip. One life, and how many more had he taken? How many of Jack’s numbers had he stolen away? His grip tightened. Squeezed. Tore. One less Talon Agent, and yet more blood on his hands.

He could have kept counting then, spinning at a noise behind him. Two. The force of his reflexive blow shattering ribs and sending blood spilling down the next one’s chin. The third agent going down, to a sharp jab to the temple, followed by Jack’s foot stamping down on the vulnerable column of his throat.

It was as he lunged for the fourth, a familiar grin spreading across his lips and a snarl bubbling up his throat that he realised he didn’t want to count them. He didn’t care about their numbers, their lives. He didn’t want to remember them or the fact that they had been people.

Counting reminded him that he was human, and he wasn’t human, not really. Not anymore. He hadn’t been since the moment he’d let Jack Morrison die; he just hadn’t let himself realise it. No, he had been too afraid to admit it.

You call me a monster, and yet…

Gabriel had seen it from the start and warned him. Just as he had with Overwatch. The snarl became a choked sob, and he faltered enough to take a punch to the face because nothing had changed. He had chased. He had searched for the truth. But he hadn’t changed.

He was still lying to himself, to Gabriel.

He stumbled back, making no effort to defend himself as a second blow split open his lip, a third making his head ring, before a sharp kick to the thigh had him crumpling to the ground. They were on him now – the fourth and two more, raining hits down on him from above. And somewhere in the middle of it all, he felt a sharp pain. A jagged, raw thing that ripped through his chest, making him howl beneath the force of it all, all too human in that moment.

That was when he broke.

Or maybe it was when he was reborn, as he stiffened beneath the onslaught of blows. He had been human because of the people he was protecting because of his family and friends.

Because of Gabriel,

He’d already lost that, through his own actions and inaction, as well as the actions as others. All he had left now was the chase and the hunt, and a man who had already seen what he was.

You call me a monster, and yet…

“I’m a monster too,” he growled under his breath. The words settling over him. It was terrifying and freeing all at once, a weight lifting from his shoulders, and suddenly he could breathe again. Drinking in the pain burning through his body. The fear he could feel coming from them in waves, even though the fight had turned in their favour. The blood in the air, and he laughed, wild and giddy as he surged to his feet, teeth bared.

A monster of their own making.

****

Jack wasn’t chasing him anymore.

It had taken Gabriel longer than it should have to admit that to himself. Part out of denial and part out of fear. Because, if Jack wasn’t chasing him anymore, and he wasn’t searching for the truth – which seemed unlikely with the erratic pattern of his hunts these days – then what was he doing?

Killing. Murdering. Taking lives without reason or hesitation.

Talon was sitting up now and taking notice. Jack’s targets might be low level, but the numbers were no longer negligible, and it had painted a target on his back.

Not that it seemed to faze him. The parties that were sent after him soon added to the growing list of lives that he had taken, and Gabriel wondered how Jack could bear it, remembering how he used to count each and every life he took.

Did he still do that? And if so, how could he bear it?

Gabriel was a killer. It was a stain on his soul that he had come to terms with a long time ago, and it had never been without reason. Oh, there had been times when he’d strayed a little too close to that edge, but Jack had always been there, either at his side or in spirit to pull him back.

Until now, he would have said that Jack wasn’t a killer. Oh, he could kill. The Crisis had made sure of that, adding a darkness to his partner’s soul that he had feared would break him more than once, but it had never taken over. Jack had stubbornly clung to who he was, never letting himself forget what they were fighting for, or against.

So, what had changed?

Was he so desperate that he was letting himself forget? Was it because Gabriel had told him to chase him, and to keep chasing, without giving him any real hope that it would change things?

Or…

“You call me a monster, and yet…” The words came back to him at the next scene, deafening in the silence as he walked amongst the bodies of men and women who were nothing more than numbers to Talon, but would once have meant something to Jack. But not this time. Jack had been wild and merciless, painting the world with their blood.

Jack was making an art out of death.

Becoming the monster that Gabriel had glimpsed for a moment, but never thought that he could become because this was Jack Morrison. The man who had risked his lives for strangers without the slightest hesitation, who had pushed himself and them to make a difference, even when the world had been against them.

Jack, who had hoped and believed and clung to the idea of Overwatch long after Gabriel had realised that it was doomed.

Jack, who he had walked away from after promising him that he would always be there.

A monster of his own making…

*

Gabriel started chasing him again, the Reaper angry and restless in the back of his mind, but no match for the single-minded focus that gripped him. It wasn’t hard to track him. Any caution Jack had once was gone, the kill taking priority over everything else, to the point where Talon who shouldn’t have been capable of getting close to him, managed to close on him several times.

Never to any avail though, and each fight, each kill, took Jack that little bit further away from him.

In the end, it was Sombra who found Jack for him.

Gabriel had learned too late that she was being sent out with a group to try and bring down Jack, and if he was honest, he had thought that was the last that he was going to see of her. Sombra was smart, cunning, and a survivor…

But Jack was a monster.

She was the only survivor. Returning to the base, bloodied and injured and more haunted than he could ever remember seeing her. He’d had to wait. Both him and the Reaper champing at the bit until he was able to slip into the infirmary.

She had been waiting for him, sat up in the bed, her arm strapped up and a tablet in her lap. She’d looked up at him as he entered, eyes searching for something, and he wasn’t sure if she’d found it or if she’d realised that there was no stopping him, because she sighed and held out the tablet.

He’d taken it hesitantly, half expecting a trick or trap, eyes immediately locking onto the moving dot of a target on the map that filled the screen.

“Jack?” He asked hope and fear warring for control, and Sombra had nodded. He’d almost laughed then, relief making him giddy as he held the tablet in trembling hands. He could find Jack. He could… what? Stop him? Bring him home?

Kill him?

The Reaper was there, stirring up old anger and hurt, and the shift must have been perceptible because Sombra had tensed, observing him and that was like being doused in cold water, reminding him that Jack wasn’t the only monster here, and he took a deep breath. “Thank you.” Thank you for marking him, and for giving me this chance.

For reminding me that I need to be human.

“He’s not the man you remember Gabe,” Sombra warned him after a moment, the nickname reassuring him that she knew he wasn’t slipping. This time. “He…” Her expression clouded over, haunted and fearful, something that he had never thought he would see from her, and her gaze was more serious than he’d ever seen it as she met his. “You call yourself a monster Gabe, but next to him, you’re just a human with a bite.”

“Maybe.” Gabriel allowed not wanting her to see how the words cut deep. Jack, what have you done? He looked at the tablet once more before he straightened. “But if he’s a monster, he’s one I helped to make and that has to count for something.”

He hoped.

****

Jack was waiting for him.

Sombra’s tracker had led him to a warehouse on the outskirts of town, that had been used by one of the numerous gangs that Talon outsourced to for tasks beneath their notice.

_Had._

Apparently, the gang had been there when Jack had come calling, and they hadn’t been prepared for a monster in their midst, their bodies littering the floor as Gabriel had materialised in the shadows. It was a familiar sight after the last few months, but it didn’t stop the sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach as he stepped through the mess.

Laughter greeted him as he moved into the central part of the warehouse, wild and cackling, followed by the sound of bone breaking as someone shrieked in pain. That drew him out of the shadows, and as he stepped out into the open, blue eyes met his, shadowed by the blood splattered across Jack’s face.

It was like looking at the shadow of himself in the mirror, but worse and he shivered under the weight of the dark gaze.

He turned his attention to the gang member in Jack’s hands, both arms at a weird angle, his front drenched with blood. He was still alive, stirring feebly in Jack’s grip, pained whimpers bubbling up along with blood, and quiet, desperate pleas. Jack followed his gaze, lips pulling back in a vicious smirk, and before Gabriel could stop him, he reached down and twisted sharply before dropping the body to the ground in front of him.

The sound was deafening in the quiet, and it took Gabriel a moment to find his voice. “What have you done?” He asked, and it sounded remarkably like ‘what have I done’ to his own ears, even before Jack laughed. This laughter was different than the mad cackle before, brittle and broken, as Jack slowly pushed himself up off the crate he had been perched on.

“You call me a monster, and yet…” Jack whispered, the words carrying clearly as he threw Gabriel’s words back at him. “Don’t you like this Gabriel?” He asked, louder this time as he spun around, gesturing at the devastation surrounding him. “After all, I finally admitted the truth.”

The truth.

A word that had become so twisted over the years, clouded by lies, by doubts and hesitation. Warped by Gabriel’s expectations, their arguments and Jack’s desire to believe and hope. It had never sounded so poisonous as it did right then, whispered with a sickening reverence that tore at Gabriel, more than any accusation or spiteful word ever could.

“Jack, this…”

“Is what I am,” Jack cut across him, a hardness seeping into his voice now. The blue eyes burning as he stepped forward, and for the first time, Gabriel found himself unable to move. Locked in place by the force of that gaze, by the darkness that seemed to swirl around them as Jack prowled towards him. He tried to move, to say something, but he had nothing and then Jack was right in front of him and he braced himself for an attack. Waiting for the pain that he was sure would follow. Caught off guard, when instead Jack reached out and caressed his face, a terrible mockery of how he used to do it. “You saw it didn’t you, back in that alley. You even told me what I am, I just wasn’t ready to admit it then.”

“Jack…” Gabriel breathed, finally finding his voice, shaking his head. “That wasn’t…”

Anger greeted his denial, and now Jack was gripping his face, leaning close so that Gabriel couldn’t escape that burning gaze. “I thought you would be happy. That you would finally have a monster, who could match you,” Jack whispered, and then he was smiling again as he added softly. “After all, you helped to make him…”


End file.
